Forgotten Places, Radical Hope, and the Environmental Humanities: Travels on an Industrial River - Bethany Wiggin

The lower stretch of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River is hidden in plain sight, rising and falling with the tide between hardened embankments and rotting piers, lined by rail tracks and refineries, crossed by pipelines and superhighways. It is a "sacrificial" landscape. Yet, its sacrifice has been largely forgotten. Drawing on a year of collaborations with fellow travelers on the river, Wiggin considers in this talk how might we begin to remember this river's past and ask if we can locate hope in this setting?

Bethany Wiggin is an Associate Professor of German at the University of Pennsylvania where she is also director of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities and Affiliate Faculty in English and Comparative Literature. She currently holds a Public Engagement Fellowship from the Whiting Foundation for her work on the relationships between people and nature on the Lower Schuylkill River. 

This event is co-sponsored by the Max Kade Center for German Studies, Environmental Studies and Sciences, and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures.